Learning Something New

 Mr Badger bought me a course book on Illustration a couple of years ago, and I'm loving the doodly downtime it's led to!  I love the structuring of the image, but it's also led to me having MUCH more confidence in my colouring, and in using more than one type of colouring medium - the picture above is done with the watercolour pencils, drawing out the colour as a palette first and adding little bits with water - probably my preferred way of using the watercolour pencils.

I'm also LOVING using the new Blends - the colours are much stronger, and I do think they are easier to blend than my previous favourite promarkers (sorry promarkers!) - probably because of the pairing of shades which makes such things super easy.  I can't wait to get my hands on all the lovely new colours when the new catalogue goes live!

Showcasing DSP

Ever fallen in love with a DSP stack?  I know I have.  I may have three packs of this one, for example... just in case...

However, not everyone likes the same things.  I was speaking to a friend about this pack, and she was hesitant, because she's not a fan of glitter (it's OK, I believe she's getting the help she needs 😂).  So I came up with this little pocket card - it's DL-sized - which shows off every design in the pack.  The tags are removable, so you can see both sides, and they can even be used by the recipient should they wish!  I'm definitley going to be doing more of these in the future!

Faux Marquetry with Eastern Medallions Thinlets

I've blown this picture up so you can see the detail!  I call this technique faux marquetry, and I love the effects of swapping out the die-cut pieces for identical pieces cut in another colour.  In this case, I've used six different pieces of the Wood Textures DSP, along with some highlights in gold foil.  It's time consuming and fiddly, but I really think it's worth it, because the results look awesome!  Because it's die cut, there's no room for "getting it wrong" - the pieces are all the right size and shape because they've come from the same die - win!

Don't forget, I can do private classes for small groups, so contact me if you fancy having a go at this, or anything else on this blog :)

Memories & Monochrome

I love the Petal Passion Memories & More Card Pack.  I love the monochrome-with-hint-of-pink of them, but of course, they can so easily be stepped up by adding colour, giving you almost infinite possibilties to match the cards to whatever theme you have going on.

While I know that you know I love scrapbooking, this time I actually turned them into cards - it's a really quick and simple way of adding some seriously lovely focal points to cards with the minimum of fuss - I made all of these in not much more than an hour, and most of that was being a bit picky about which cards to choose!  I think these make a beautiful, classic statement, and I can't wait to play with them some more.

Crafting for Crafters

I've got a real thing about colouring and being (or at least, trying to be!) a bit artistic at the moment.  This is one of my favourite-sets-that-I-haven't-done-much-with-yet, and I'm so happy it's not retiring, because I want to put some serious thought into how I can get the most out of it.

This was made as a card for a friend who shares my love of crafting, and I think it was a hit!  Maybe I should branch out into making cards for... carders... ;o)

New Catty Excitement!

OK, so... there's a new catalogue coming soon...

This is my first make using one of the new products I picked up at the big reveal at OnStage on Saturday.  I'm so excited for this catalogue - new colours, new stamps, new dies, new embellishments... new overdraft... 😆

#stampinup30

Memory Keeping

I used to be a hoarder.  I now have a five-year-old, and all the detritus that brings along with it, so by necessity I'm not so bad at hoarding as I used to be ("get this out of the house now!" being more my mantra these days).  I do, of course, have a few boxes of letters, mementos, special bits and bobs from my past and, now, my son's past - I will never not have space for his tiny yellow baby jeans!

I started to be able to move past my slightly-irrationally-sentimental stage when I read a tip in a magazine: "Instead of keeping an object you don't use or need, take a photo, and keep the photo.  Photos take up much less space".  Eureka.

It's probably for this reason that I loooove scrapbooking.  Scrapbooking is my "me time" crafting - creating layouts of photos to make sure the memories are kept safe and special.  I now have four Memories & More binders, and I'm sure there will be more to follow!

One of my binders is dedicated to "old" photos - ie, pre-Badger Cub, but goes right back.  There are really bad photos I took in my childhood, school days and school holiday layouts (oh, that hair!), and even some true "vintage" shots, like this one of my Granny and Grandad's wedding - they're at the end of the line, behind all her brothers, their wives, and my great-grandparents.  I love this shot!

 

Something else about to go into the "vintage" binder is this page.  I found the photo lurking and thought it deserved its own spread, and what better to use than the mountains from the Waterfront set?  I showed it to my dad today (thirty years on from when this was taken), and he was a little confused that it wasn't a book, but hey!  As an aside, I'm very proud of those "eyelets" - it's amazing what you can do with the new Blends™.

And finally, a little shout out to my bravery...  I have a problem with white/blank space, and have trouble leaving well alone, so I had a go at... putting nothing on the page except the pictures (eek!).  No captions, embellishment, layers... I think I need a lie down!

Hope you've enjoyed looking at my pics.  Why not hop along and follow the blog hop for some more crafty inspiration around memories?